The Nature-Nurture Debates: Bridging the GapHow is it possible that in more than one hundred years, the nature-nurture debate has not come to a satisfactory resolution? The problem, Dale Goldhaber argues, lies not with the proposed answers, but with the question itself. In The Nature-Nurture Debates, Goldhaber reviews the four major perspectives on the issue - behavior genetics, environment, evolutionary psychology, and developmental systems theory - and shows that the classic, reductionist strategies (behavior genetics and environmental approaches) are incapable of resolving the issue because they each offer a false perspective on the process of human development. It is only through a synthesis of the two holistic perspectives of evolutionary psychology and developmental systems theory that we will be able to understand the nature of human behavior. |
Contents
A Brief History Lesson | 14 |
A Primer on Methodology and Analysis | 37 |
The Classic Debate | 59 |
The New Debate | 91 |
So What? | 121 |
Now What? | 141 |
| 163 | |
| 177 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
adaptations adopted parents adult antecedents argue argument behavior genetic behavior geneticists biological Bjorklund brain Bronfenbrenner child children’s development claim classic debate cognitive cohort context correlations cultural defined definition degree developmental systems developmental systems theory differences difficulty environment epigenetic evolution evolutionary psychologists evolved expression fact factors find findings first fit focus function Galton genes genome genotype Gottlieb heredity HighScope human development identified impact implications independent individual influence innate interactions interdependence issue Jensen less level of analysis Lickliter main effects Meaney measures mechanisms modern synthesis modules nativists and empiricists natural selection nature and nurture nature—nurture debate ofthe one’s ontogeny organism organism’s outcomes particular patterns perspective phenotype phylogeny Plomin prenatal psychology question recognize reductionist reflect role sample Scarr scientific seen shared environmental variance significant simply social species specific statistical strategies systems theorists theory Tooby and Cosmides typically variability worldview